A mom, a storyteller, homeschooling in India

The morning mystery

An adult needs 7 to 8 hours of sleep at night. Moms get a fraction of it, and in my case no mater how many hours of sleep I get it’s poor quality. I realised that recently.

I was under the impression that I was lacking energy and always felt my body needing more sleep regardless of how many hours I slept. When I went to Chennai for my exams without my daughter I slept for the first time in 3 years. I revisited sleep, no interruption sleep, stress free sleep. No one asking for water or milk every few hours, no cries in the middle of the night, nothing. Just pure sleep.

That’s changed everything for me. I realised it wasn’t me, it was the environment that was making it impossible for me to sleep. My daughter (3.5yrs) tends to drink water all night, and gets up for milk, asks if she can come on the bed with the hubby and me. All that jazz takes place the whole night, the drill gets me tired and exhausted by the time it’s morning. Also when it’s almost near wake up time, my mind starts to race with hopelessness.

Anyway I’m working on changing that. I am going to get Chennai esque sleep in Hyderabad 😉

Here are some of the measures I am taking as of now:

1. Strict rules on no waking up for water (so far it’s worked)

2. No entertainment for me (on the tablet) after midnight. I used to stay up till at-least 1:30am

3. No candy for me at night (working on that, it’s difficult)

4. No thinking about “how much” work has to be done the next morning. Instead telling myself “you have many hours of good sleep”

5. Phone strictly on silent NOT vibrate (This has changed life completely, the whatsapp vibration alerts used to wake me up)

So far that’s what I’m working on in terms of getting my sleep right, and I must say it has been working. However I find myself incredibly stressed past morning prayer, my mind moves into negative mode with “only 2 hours to sleep”. I am going to start working on positive thinking now. Even though my body is well happy and Ive gotten plenty rest, the negative thought makes me crave more sleep when I don’t necessary need it!

Another thing on my agenda is make sure I at-least take out 15 mins of quiet relaxed time for myself in the morning instead of rushing with all the chores.

Moms, now it’s your turn to share your morning blues and how you overcome them…leave comments below and share the love .